Title: Natural Selection and Charles Darwin

Lesson Overview:
Opening (5 min)
Notes (20 min)
Birds and Beaks Lab (30 min)
Discussion (15 min)
Comprehension Worksheet (15 min)
Closing (5 min)

Objectives:

1. Students will be able to summarize and explain the theory of natural selection.
2. Students will be able to determine beak shape based on diet and articulate the evolution of Darwin’s finches.

Materials:

• Power point notes
• Instructions for lab
• Tools for lab (forks, spoons, tweezers, etc)
• ‘Food’ for lab (seeds, beans, coins, etc)
• Comprehension worksheet

Links to Resources:



Safety Issues:

The lab the students will be doing in this lesson is not particularly dangerous. No chemicals will be being used and all of the tools being used will be everyday items such as forks and tweezers. I will remind the students to be careful when handing their classmates tools but otherwise this lab does not present many safety issues.

Opening:

The opening of this unit will be focused on getting students excited for the upcoming unit by showing them how evolution is important to and connected to their lives. I will do this be asking questions such as:

Who knows how humans evolved? Are we still evolving? Name some activities you like to do…do you think these would be possible if we hadn’t evolved ? For example, if students mention sports I can ask if they think catching that football or shooting that basketball would be possible without opposable thumbs. After asking these opening questions I will tell my students what we will be doing for the day. I will explain that first we will be taking some notes before moving into a lab activity. Then I will tell them that to close the lesson we will be discussing the lab and working on a comprehension worksheet. As we move from activity to activity I will ask questions to show students how each activity relates. For example, I could ask "What did we learn from the notes today that can be applied to this lab?" I will also tell students that their goal for the day will be to apply what they learned from the notes to what is happening in the lab and I will use open ended question during the discussion to check for comprehension.

Learning Activities:

1. Notes (20 min)
   1. Notes will be given at the beginning of class after my opening and will last for 20 minutes. The notes will be in power point form and projected using the smart board. Students will take notes in their class notebooks.
   2. Birds and Beaks Lab (30 min)
      1. Students are broken up into groups and each group is given different “food” items and tools to pick up the items with. This is a small class of only 9 students so I will have 3 groups of 2 and one group of 3. Students are 10th graders at the CP level and therefore I will allow them to pick their own groups. After trying to pick up the items with the different tools students hypothesize why it was easier to pick up certain items with certain tools and related this to the evolution of finches’ beaks.
      2. For food I will use objects of varying size to represent that size of the seeds that the finches eat. For example, I will use small items such as black beans and raisins. These items are of similar size but one is soft and one is hard. Then I will use two larger items, again one soft and one hard, and here I will use large cut croutons and queen sized olives. The food will also be placed on the black table tops because we will want to use one consistent surface since camouflage is not a variable we are testing here. The tools we will use to represent the beaks will vary in size just like the finches beaks. We will use chopsticks to represent small beaks, tweezers to represent medium beaks, and salad tongs to represent large beaks.
      3. Students will then be given 2 minutes with each tool to see how much and what kind of food they can pick up with each beak. They will then record how much and what kinds of food they got with each beak. For example they would record that with the tweezers they picked up 6 items total in 2 minutes, 3 beans and 3 raisins. Then they would compare this to how much and what kinds of food they collected using the other tools. Students will be given directions that specify how much time they will have, how much of each food item to use during each trial, and a data sheet to collect their data with.
      4. To check for comprehension I will ask students questions such as the following: Was it easier to pick up small items with small tools or did you find that the opposite was true? Why do you think it was easier to pick up small pieces of food with the small beak and not the large beak? Can you relate this to the types of food finches eat based on their beak shapes? Did the hardness or softness of food matter or did you find all small items were equally easy to pick up with small beaks regardless of hardness? Based on those observations do you think it matters to birds if their food is soft or hard?
         1. Every pair of students gives a 5 minute informal presentation explaining what tools they had, what items, and what kind of beak a bird species in that area would have. Students will be given a sheet with clear instruction and guidelines for what they need to include in their discussion so that the presentations are informative and useful.
         2. Comprehension Worksheet (15 min)
            1. Students will be given a worksheet at the end of the discussion that will check for comprehension of both the notes and the lab. Worksheets will be collected at the end of the class unless students need to finish them at home.

Closing:

With 5 minutes left in the period I will ask students to stop working and bring the class back together. I will ask a few open ended questions to check for comprehension, mention what we will be doing next time, and assign homework. The open ended questions I will ask will be similar to questions I asked to check for comprehension during the activity and they will also relate back to the notes. For example I will say " We learned today that birds have specialized beaks depending on the food they eat, what kind of food would you expect a bird with a very large beak to eat? Why?" I will also ask questions that relate this topic back to evolution in general and to their own lives by asking something such as "Do you think humans have specialized traits based on what foods we eat?" "Can you name any?"

Assessment

There will be no formal assessment today but I will be informally assessing the students during their informal presentations. I will also be collecting the comprehension worksheets which will count as a homework grade.

Homework

Finish comprehension worksheet if not finished by the end of class.